MAP23: Unholy Temple (Doom 64)

MAP23: Unholy Temple is the twenty-third map of Doom 64, designed by Tim Heydelaar. It uses the music track "Relentless Coil".

Essentials
The sky is dark with forever burning green fire, signifying how deep you are in Hell. You start off in a small moat that surrounds the central temple that vaguely resembles a pyramid. On top, you can barely see Hell knights and spectres viciously wanting to chase you down. In the moat, there are several arachnotrons that are luckily encountered one by one. There is a teleport at the end of the moat that takes you to the "second" floor of the temple. After defeating the spectres and Hell knights, you climb up the temple to turn on the switch which will you go inside the temple. Inside the temple are several corpses and two barons of Hell waiting to ambush you as soon as you step in. Continuing on there is a room with a couple of arachnotrons also waiting to ambush you as soon as you take the megaarmor.

It's best not to engage the arachnotrons right away as the room they are in is rather confined and it makes it difficult for you to dodge their plasma fire. Instead, keep running out into the open courtyard beyond. A wave of pinkies will drop from the sky and come after you. Run around the courtyard to dodge and kill them, but beware that two more waves of pinkies will appear as well along with a wave of barons. At that point, you can manipulate them into infighting to make taking them out easier. Afterward, a switch on one of the pillars will lower the blue skull key on the rear center pedestal for you to pick up. On your way out, using the floor angles as cover, taking out the arachnotrons will be easier.

The blue skull key grants you access to a corner tower that houses the red skull key. This tower is very small, but inside is a lost soul and two crushers that activate upon collecting the key.

Then head for the red door on the other end of the temple. Beware of the homing missile trap that is set off as you run by. Enter the red door and start taking out the shotgunners and Hell knights inside. The room will branch off in three directions. The yellow skull key is in one of the branches. However, approaching it causes it to vanish and appear in one of the other branches as a baron appears and attacks. This happens each time you go after the key, and on the third and final time, the key vanishes and appears on the ledge above while you fight one last baron. Once the baron is dead, steps will raise and you can finally collect the key and move on to the next phase of the map.

With all three skull keys now in your possession, go through the central chamber that takes you to the highest tier like before when you battled the arachnotrons, and hordes of pinkies in the courtyard, but this time turn left and lower the yellow pillars. Beyond is a room with a recessed radiation pit that surrounds a stone square floor with a brick square pillar that has switches on three of its four sides, each with colored skull key emblems etched on each side. There are also shotgunners and an arachnotron perched on the ledge in back across the radiation pit. The aforementioned switches act as a combination lock which lowers pillars blocking three special switches located in the courtyard, in the room beyond the red door, and opens a special door outside the temple in the moat. Both switches and door have codes etched into the wall beside them. There are three codes, and each has to be entered one at a time. Beware that entering an incorrect code will lock you down inside the chamber and trigger the appearance of two Hell knights which you must kill to be released. These switches, and the switch beyond the special moat door, lower barricades which block the map exit switch.

Beyond the special door in the moat lies the last special switch, however the room in which it's located is actually a large booby trap. Upon entering the room, you have to face off against a few arachnotrons. After they are killed, a ledge in the middle stone wall will lower for you to board and it will raise you up to a switch. Pressing the switch will cause the floor of the room to open up into a massive radiation pit with only a small portion left to navigate across. This portion leads to two niches with switches in them guarded by Hell knights. These switches raise a few more small pieces of floor to navigate the rest of the way around the central wall to a switch on the other side which when pressed, opens the wall across the radiation pit where the last special switch can be accessed. This also releases four cacodemons which immediately attack you. Take them out, then jump for the outside wall to hit the last switch. Then take the teleporter which will bring you back up to the top of the back narrow floor section which will force you to jump back around and then jump outside the door making your way back into the temple. (Note: If you fall into the radiation pit, the front floor section can be lowered to get you to safety.) Then go activate the other two switches if not done so already. Then head back to the room beyond the red door to reach the now accessible exit switch, which takes you to the penultimate level No Escape.

Secrets

 * 1) After getting up the first floor of the temple, go to the other side till you face an Unmaker gun alongside energy cells on the outer walls. Turn around, get up the elevator and shoot the crest above the gun. The platform will drop for short time, so jump off the ledge to reach the secret. (sector 169)
 * 2) In the room where you enter the three colors codes, one side of the middle pillar without switch, is a hidden wall with a teleporter that will take you to the supercharge on the other side of the room. (sector 260) Note: going through the teleporter will instantly kill the arachnotron guarding the sphere.
 * 3) In the red door hall, go to the middle then face left, leaving the exit behind you. The wall at the very end can be lowered for rocket launcher ammo. (sector 247)

Routes and tricks
On the second tier of the temple, there are two sections of the walkway that trigger homing fireball traps from the buildings across the moat. These sections are marked by a pair of columns positioned near the edge of the walkway that support an even higher walkway which you traverse later on. Stop evenly in between the middle of the columns so the homing fireballs will hit them instead of you, then you can proceed safely.

In the room with the combination key switches, it is best to enter all three correct combinations first before heading for the three switches unlocked by the combos. To reset the switches, simply strafe-jump out of the room as if you were exiting, then jump back in. This saves time especially for speedrunning.

There's an easy way to remember all three combinations without having to go run to the stone etchings that show them. There is a visual cue in the HUD when you have all three skull keys in your possession. It just so happens that the game is programmed to already display the keys in one of the three combinations, left to right, which is blue-yellow-red. To recognize the other two, start with the next color and wrap around to cover all three colors, again going left to right. So you get yellow-red-blue, and red-blue-yellow.

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level: